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It used to be that the only time I felt like I could write well was when I had this moment of inspiration. You know the feeling. It was my life’s blood. It was the only time I could write anything good, anything emotional, anything meaningful. Trouble was, it only lasted a few hours at most. After that, my muse had other things to do. Flash fiction is the only thing that ever came out of those moments of epiphany. And they were few and far between; the muse only ever graced me every few months. The muse came more often when I was in a writing class. She never came while I was actually doing something for my writing class, but she came in the in-between moments, and I was grateful for her presence, like an alcoholic dad that actually shows up on time for Thanksgiving. Of all the emotions that have come and gone, this is the only one that feels good, true, and right every time.
I took one of those Myers-Briggs personality tests, and it told me what I wanted to hear. I was “rare,” maybe 1-2% of the population, a “perceptive” personality that could sometimes be taken as a psychic. (Score! Possible career path.) “This is like a more accurate horoscope,” my boyfriend said to me. A “writer would be a suitable occupation” for my personality type. I didn’t need this validation; writing was the only thing that ever gave me that divine feeling of doing something totally me, totally right.
At the same time, entirely debilitating, panicky self-doubt struck much more often. Fear was more my goddess than the inspirational muse was. Maybe that’s why she came so rarely, she had to fight off Fear in an epic battle before she could make her way into my psyche. Fear came just as unwarranted as my Muse, but with just as much force. She told me, “You’ll never be Emerson.” “You’ll never be an Orson Scott Card.” “You’ll never be Kelly Link.” I was a padawan trying to break into the game of the greats.
But Fear was right, I would never be any of those things. I would have to make my own way, a way no author could forge for me. I was not destined to write the teen books with girl’s red lips and stylized, glossy names like “Dawn’s Kiss” on the cover. (Shoot me if publishing agencies make that my novel’s, my baby’s, future. Oh wait, you want to give me an advance of $5,000? Put Baby Jesus on the cover, I don’t care!) I am destined to write my ultimate book, the book I wish somebody had wrote. If Philip Pullman, Kelly Link, Holly Black and Orson Scott Card’s book had a baby, it still would look nowhere near as magnificent as this book to me, because this book would actually be a part of me. Actually, I take it back, will you guys all get together and collaborate to write a book? And then, I guess… somehow mate it with another book… and make a baby book.
I don’t believe in god (notice the lower case, I bet you did), but if I had any faith in my little agnostic body at all, this book would be it. My destiny. (Cue sweeping, epic movie score.) The problem was, I could only write when my muse decided to visit, and that was less often than my monthly gift from nature. (Thanks a lot, god.)
People told me to try writing when I was drunk or high, but I knew how that would come out. (Either in Wingdings or something like this, “People are so weird. We all try to look like each other, act like each other, but we’re not. We’re our own selves. I mean, we’re all just like each other in how we try to act like everyone else, but that just keeps us from all being ourselves, from being humans, from being humanists.” Or just an epic MS Paint drawing.) Actually, wait, maybe writing high is a good idea…
I am hungover at the moment. That’s another way to get the Muse to take a stop in my brain; get severely drunk and then Self-Doubt can’t even wade through the muck I’ve made of my mind the next morning. I’m too out of it to really ponder how bad I could be at this thing, how I could never write long stories, how I’d never be the authors I admire. When a hangover set in, I guess I could say it was the truest part of myself.
So anyways, that’s my problem. Musey over there only visits every once in a while, and for a novel, I’d need her to visit for about a year. Maybe more. I read all these things about how to be a writer, because when I’m not writing, it’s about the closest thing to making me feel like I’m actually doing something productive. It tells me to write at least every day. To write a few pages full of rants and bullshit, and then try to be creative after. My problem is, I go on a two-page long rant of what the fuck my boyfriend is possibly thinking when he does something or other, but no real writing comes of that.
In truth, I have 1,001 excuses for why I don’t write everyday. Mostly, Lazy and Self-Doubt are my bffls. You guys are probably the best muses in the world because you visit everyone everyday. There must be 1,001,001,001,001,001——wait, that doesn’t work, does it? It looks more like the matrix——of you and only maybe 10 Muses of Inspiration and Great Novels. For 7 billion people. Good going, god of Writing. And did I mention I have a full-time job? Yeah, I edit other people’s books. Educational books. For 8 hours a day, plus 2 hours+ in traffic, plus the time it takes to talk on the phone or video chat or whatever to keep a pseudo long distance relationship going. I’m supposed to be at work right now. Who created a system where I have to do something for half my day that I hate and then I feel guilty about doing my life’s work because I’m late for the thing that makes me enough money to survive from one measly paycheck to another? Fook you, corporate ‘Merica.
God, I really just want to write something good. Something beyond two pages. Something that will have a cool cover and good content and will make someone else think, “Shit, I could never write that well.” Nah nah nah, not really, just to think anything at all really besides “This is shite.” (Obviously my readers are very worldly, and therefore British. I’ve been listening to too many audiobooks.) No no, they could never think my work is shite, because if I ever actually got around to writing a novel, it would be damn good. I would spend way too long editing and re-editing and writing and editing and editing for it to be bad, unless you were a complete mindless twat. Wanker. With a jammy dodger. (British courtesy of Louise Rennison.)
Anyways, I need a 6-week long writing workshop so I can make Self-Doubt shut the FUCK UP ALREADY and have the Muse of Inspiration at least stick around long enough for me to write something longer than two pages. And writing classes seem to be the only thing to do that for me.
God, did I mention I tried to create a writer’s group using Craigslist? I should have known, but I didn’t, that there were so many goddamn screenwriters in L.A.
I need this workshop. I really want to meet and learn from you, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. And all you other authors too, I need to check out your work. And Clarion West’s authors too. You’re the Muses of Inspiration in disguise, right? I knew it.
I just wrote a two-page-long rant again, didn’t I?
(Please pick me.)

Kestrin Yugen wasn’t even a rat in a cage; she didn’t have the good fortune to be able to see her captors, or her surroundings. She couldn’t make an escape plan. She was a rat in a box, a cubicle. Rats get more space to run, surely. She just sat in an ergonomically designed chair with a conspicuous butt-shaped stain on its seat, probably from the person who worked here before her, who must’ve slowly seeped into the seat until he disappeared. She could feel her muscles begin to atrophy, her bones slowly filing down to shards, like the automatic pencil sharpener she was looking at that always sharpened the tips of her pencils into oblivion, no matter how she tried to time it differently. Three seconds was a small hill of wood with the graphite just starting to peak out, three and a half seconds was an inch-long shank. She visualized her brain mass decreasing to a peanut, her body slowly devolving back into an ape. She was hairier under her work pants than she wanted to admit. She could feel their spiky ends graze the polyester, but she comforted herself that no one else knew that just by looking at her.

She filed for a living. That is what she did. She had the system laid out for her, so she didn’t even need to use her brain to create one of her own. Blue means new patient, blue goes here. Red means September patient, red goes in the September file, and so on. If she was color blind or had synesthesia, maybe this would be a problem. Something to overcome. Unfortunately, she had neither; her eyes worked just fine. In fact, she felt she had a good eye for color. Girls always remarked on the beauty of her room, the stylish edge to her clothing. Here, she was an intern. Here, she was the bottom of the food chain. Here, her range of motion was less than ten feet. She had no window to peer out of to pass the time. The only window she had was the one open on her computer, and that was full of people, blogging people, chatting people, whining people. Looking at her through the little window, peering in at her sad, beige little box as they drew clever comics and posted on forums about the unjust law that was in danger of being passed, if she didn’t sign a petition. She mostly kept that window closed.

At least while she was in school she could look out the window during class, day dreaming of climbing the tree outside. She didn’t even climb trees anymore, but being in class made her think of her childhood, of being free; she wished for that carelessness so badly again that she felt like a child, tempestuous.

She didn’t feel any more comfortable in school, though at least the school gates were a cage and not a box. The other animals in the pen somehow could smell her fear, knew she was to be avoided. They didn’t fight her, though, or call her names. She didn’t get a rise out of them whatsoever. They sidestepped her like an old lion that would die soon, not a cause for concern. Yet their subconscious told them that she was an other-girl to be avoided. As if they could see by the way she tucked her thumbs under the straps of her checkered backpack and made her posture slightly more diminutive than it naturally aught to be that inside her mind, she was simultaneously a hamster cowering under cedar chips and a screaming banshee. She mostly kept her eyes on the ground, now out of habit, previously so as not to stare in the eyes of passersby, hoping one would be an acquaintance, or a cute boy who would take notice of her.

She mindlessly highlighted and unhighlighted text on the screen until Alec came up behind her, her posture utterly horrible, her spine surely working to permanently maintain that curve to her back, her elbow firmly planted on the desk in front of her, holding the entire weight of her desolation. Wordlessly, with a subtle clearing of his throat, he dropped a stack of files into her smaller, file-filled box on top of the bigger box that was her desk inside the slightly bigger box that was her “work-space.” She could tell it was Alec from the particular rolling sound his mucous made in his throat.

“Thanks,” she enthused, without turning around.

She thanked him as if he was giving her something she wanted, as if she was grateful for the pile of work he defecated on her desk. She thanked him because it was the polite thing to do, and she needed an income. She thanked him so he would be appeased and walk back to his own box.

She slid her arm under the back of her shirt and felt the little bump towards the middle of her spine. It felt bigger. She sighed audibly, then caught herself. She didn’t want to be that embarrassing person who talked to themselves all throughout the work day; there were enough of those in the office. She continued to file, feel the bump on her back get bigger, highlight and unhighlight text, sigh, then stop herself, for seven more hours. With bathroom breaks.

Other people from her high school went off to college, got pregnant, became auto mechanics, became baristas. Kestrin became a filer. She somehow lacked the motivation to do anything at all, and so she chose something on an online database that was near her parents’ house. Secretly, though, filed away now in the back of her mind under “Future,” she knew she was better than this. She knew she could do something great. So she saved up her meager earnings in her cheeks for something… What exactly, she didn’t know yet. Maybe in the winter she would start a fiscally safe, low-yield savings account so she could eventually move out.

I’m digging Gotye hard right now. His videos are graphic and his lyrics evocative. The imagery seems to be in line with the whole ’90s hip-update that’s going on right now. Kitschy and engrossing, with a gargantuan dash of whimsy. Mostly I’m obsessed with the music though. I highly suggest youtubing the shit out of him; he’s not on Spotify, so that’s what I’m currently doing. Oh, I mean, I’m working. Oh shit, I just realized it’s lunch. Why am I pretending to be working…

I love watching super-8 films and have long wanted to make a look-alike of my own, so when James and I went to Big Bear a few weeks ago and it snowed like crazy (to beautiful effect), it seemed like the perfect opportunity. James and I shot the film, and I edited. Enjoy 🙂

Why don’t you love me the way I want you to love me? Am I sucking all the color out of you? Am I selfish? Should you love me the way you want to? Should I accept love as it is given, as it is able to be given? Why isn’t it enough? Do I want drama, passion? Do all women want that? Do we all give up when we realize you don’t have the emotionshormonessensitivityunderstandingneed that we do? Do we accept you as other? Do we keep searching until we fill the need? Do children fill the need? Do friends? Does our work? Do we? Does anything? Does satisfaction exist, or is it a passing sense of filled hunger until our bellies go empty again, overwhelming at one point, a few hours later, yearning for more like it was never there? Does my childhood give me this need? Is it wrong, other? Am I wrong? Do I crawl into myself and wait for it to pass? Do I crawl into another? Do I keep crying? Do I force myself to stop?

You need to relax. Let’s go get something to eat.

When you won’t devote yourself to me, am I foolish to devote myself to you? Should I be distant, as the moon, as you are? Should I cut my ribs open and reveal all? Does that matter? Would you be horrified by the blood? Would you be entranced? Would you be disgusted? Would you be sympathetic? Would you pity me? Would you play in it? Would I be engrossed in the smile on your face? Would I let you?

I love you.

Am I overemotional? Am I different for feeling this way? Would others mock me? Would they see truth, or a pitiful form shuddering in the corner? Would they dare to touch me, dare to try again when I rebuffed? Is this my fault?

You’re overreacting.

Do I accept reality? Do I put on a pretty face? Do I dig into someone else’s mind, take them into the dark pond with me? Do I carry them into the depths, so I have company? Do I grip their wrist when they try to pull away? Do they still hear me when my voice is warbled by the water that climbs up my throat? Can they see my eyes still shining? Can they see I’m not fine? If I tread to the top, and keep treading, how long will it be until I sink, not by choice, but by exhaustion?

You can swim, you’re a good swimmer.

I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything right now.

Can’t you do it for me?

How can I stay here with you when you won’t even commit to being here tomorrow?

Why are you being silent? What is it? Say it. You blame me. You don’t want to be here anymore.

I didn’t say that. You don’t understand. This isn’t the life I wanted.

Nobody gets the life they wanted. They get the life that happens.

I don’t want to believe that.

Is this life ( that you’re in control of, by the way) better? Is this working for you?

You don’t understand. I’m drowning.

If you’re drowning now, you’ll be drowning tomorrow. What’s going to pull you out of it? Decide to get out of it.

In the night, sometimes I do. I rip off my pajamas and I run through the grass and I jump over fences and I get bruises, scrapes, cuts. Then I wake up with the dark water in my chest, rising up, spilling out. I gulp in air in quick gasps, water sloshing against my ribs until my eyes close and I force it to retreat back into the sea. Until I fall back into dreamless sleep. Lately, I haven’t been dreaming at all.

Will you ever understand? I can’t control my emotions. They pour out when they want to. They claw their way out if I cage them up. They become first in line for the next thing I say. They push their bony arms out my mouth, out my eyes, out my body. I say I want truth, when all I want is release.

I’m not happy here. I feel like I need to get away, whether that’s wrong or not.

Go exercise or something.

Run in a circle? Run back to the same point I left? Rinse off my emotions in the shower?

Go shopping, get a coffee.

I don’t need a new shirt, I need a cabin deep in the woods where no one will hear me or see me.

I am really, really excited to present a new element of SIW: The Young Artist Feature! This will generally consist of an interview and a grandiose display of some of their work (or, uh, a link). I realized that a lot of the reason I started the blog is to find my identity as an artist, to figure out what that means to me. I also realized I have some very talented friends who are also trying to do the artist thing, and who likewise inspire me with their efforts, even if none of us will be paid anything…ever. I present to you an interview with Specimen #1, a friend I met through my college newspaper. (Although, we didn’t really become friends through it. We became friends when he saw me outside of a concert and drunkenly said “Hey! I know you!” Which is how true friends are made.) Let me know what you like about this, or don’t like about this. But if you don’t like Reza’s work, I don’t really want to hear about it, because you’re batshit crazy. Enjoy 🙂

Photo/Erik Jepsen

A/S/L?
Reza Farazmand
23
Cartoonist
Los Angeles, CA

When did you start thinking of yourself as an artist? Or, do you?
As a cartoonist, I think of myself as a writer first and an artist second. I use art to convey a joke or story or situation that I initially spend a lot of time putting down in words. The pictures help bring those words to life. Sometimes with sexy dinosaurs and butt jokes.

Why are you an artist? What is art to you/what does it do for you? How important is it to you?
I draw comics because I like making fun of things. It sounds simple, but that’s really all there is to it. Life is strange, people are weird, and it’s important to point out all the absurdities—and create new ones—to help take the edge off.

How did you get to where you are now, and do you want to take it further? In other words, what are your artistic goals?
I started doing Poorly Drawn Lines as a weekly comic strip in my college newspaper my freshman year. A few months later I found out about this thing called “webcomics” and decided to put PDL on the internet. The rest is history. By which I mean “things I remember in my head.”

I definitely want to take it further. PDL has started gaining an audience over the last year or so, and it’s really encouraging. If things keep going well, I’d love to make PDL my full time gig. In any case, my goal is to keep entertaining people and exploring what I can do creatively, whether that means drawing comics, writing a novel, or making tiny clay statues of Batman fighting Darth Vader and selling them on eBay. Don’t steal that idea.

What are your professional goals (if different)? How does being an artist factor into that?
Ever since I got kicked out of Astronaut Cowboy Indiana Jones school I’ve had to take a real hard look at what I want to do professionally. Like I said before, doing PDL full time would be amazing. Whatever happens, I want to continue to flex my creative muscles. Maybe I’ll open a gym for artists. Don’t steal that idea.

What are you working on now?
New comics. Always. I’m also going to be launching the PDL blog soon, where I’ll be writing short stories and essays of the humorous variety. Some of them might actually be good.

Any advice for aspiring artists?
Make stuff and put it on the internet. It’s unbelievable the kind of exposure you can get out there. Artists have a crazy level of access to people these days. Just people in general. Lots of them. Lots of people who might really enjoy what you do and support your efforts to do it.

If you could be anything else, what would it be?
Astronaut Cowboy Indiana Jones.

I’ve seen your comics on Reddit and Pinterest; how do you feel about that? (I think it’s pretty damn cool.)
I feel great about it. Reddit was actually a huge source of encouragement for me. There was a point after I graduated from college when I wasn’t sure I was going to keep drawing PDL. Then I did this comic about how I killed a spider and it got really popular on Reddit. That’s when I realized I could potentially reach a lot of people by drawing silly shit and presenting it to the masses. It goes back to that whole “put stuff on the internet” thing I mentioned earlier. The internet is a big artistic melting pot, and at the same time, a perfect democracy—good things get propelled to the surface because people share them and talk about them and lend them this amazing collective momentum. It is, for the most part, a beautiful thing.

The phone rings beside my ear. For a second, in my dream-like state, I thought it was the still the ringing of the concert from last night in my eardrum. I was sure my hearing from the year I’m going to be 79 was surely taken all in one night, and I was also sure it was worth it. I also decided I should wear ear plugs next time. I’m not as young as I used to be, and I keep catching my memories flitting off, no longer safely stored in the rows and rows of filing cabinets in my mind. Those are all filled now with how to file tax returns, Tuesday, December 13’s doctor’s appointment at 2 p.m. in unit 8B, the various deductibles from my sucky health insurance. I picked up the phone.
“Hello?” I was surprised by the raspy sleep-sound of my voice.
“Hey, I didn’t think you were going to answer. You’ve gotta get up,” Chris said.
“Why? What happened?” I put alarm into my voice in what I hope sounds like sympathy, but I stay in the exact same spot underneath my comforter. The air is cold. It’s probably something stupid, like it usually is when he calls.
“The coolest thing ever, Ru. The ocean. There’s a bunch of surfers out here, it’s like watching some epic game of cosmic golf…but it’s real.” Chris sounds genuinely excited.
“I have work tomorrow…” I start.
“You’ll regret it if you don’t come out. Seriously. This is a once in a lifetime thing,” he says, with that same uppity tone.
Hell, I’m still young.
“Fine, where are you?”
“The Shores, by lifeguard post number three. Text me when you’re close.” And he hangs up. That was rude; he never just hangs up on me.
I force myself willfully out of bed and pull on a hoodie. I’m not changing out of my pajamas and subjecting my naked bits to the cold, fuck that. Hopefully there’s no one cute there.
As I drive down the windy two-mile stretch to the beach, I crane my eyes to the ocean. Can’t see anything lit up over there but the occasional, methodical glow of a fog light. My car hits a reflective bump on the road, waking me up. Shit, better keep my eyes on the road. People die here all the time, and I can see their cars float off the cliff before everything shifts into slow motion, doors open, bodies, books, and clothes fluttering down to the water. The sickening ploosh as body meets water.
I pull into the parking lot, the only car. I text Chris, and after a few minutes I see the little light of his cell phone bouncing towards me in the air, an artificial firefly. It’s really dark out here. He opens my door and lets in a gust of briny, dead-seaweedy cold air.
“Fuck!” I scream, and pull my sleeves down over my knuckles, blowing into the nautilus curve of my hand.
“Come on!” He says, and he’s already jumping back over the fence that demarcates the beach from the lot. I rush to catch up, my body as stiff as a nutcracker’s. I pulse my hands open and closed to get some blood back into them as the cold sand crawls into my sandals and grinds itself in between my toe and the strap. My eyes have been glued to my feet and the sand so I can keep my face out of the wind, and trick my body into believing I’m still warm for as long as possible. I’m at the point where the dry sand becomes wet sand when I notice that the sound of the waves is suddenly loud, and lift my head. I see it, and then I see nothing else; the cacophony of the ocean, my body temperature, and the wet force of the wind become a backdrop to something out of a fantasy book…